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Rachitsky: New product leaders should fix an immediate team grievance for a quick win

Lenny Rachitsky · 20 Product: Lenny Rachitsky on The 3 Key Roles of the Product Manager, 5 Skills All The Best PMs Have, When To Hire Your First PM, How to Structure the Hiring Process for PMs & What Leaders Can Do to Make Their PMs Successful · Mar 16, 2022 · at 38:23

Lenny Rachitsky offers actionable advice for product leaders entering a new organization.

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“Suggest that they ask everyone on their team. What's just like bugging you? What's something that we should improve? What's a process that's annoying? What's something that we can fix? And then go fix something. Go fix a thing that is bugging people and create kind of a quick win where people are going to be like, oh, this person's like great. They're already fixing things.”

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